The Queen of Cups
by llivla
Summary: Genocide, nuclear fallout, men seeking ascension to godhood...oh yeah, and DrJ's there too. You know, just for fun.
1. Chapter 1

The Queen of Cups

Chapter One: Talon and Tea, an Introduction of the Deck

* * *

It's funny how easy it is to fall of the edge and into the oblivion of absolute surrender. The woman so used to standing in the spotlight now operates the marionettes from the shadows; the politician's balancing act, all too aware of what happens if she should fall…

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. I have tried…and fled in fear from threats of being raped by a dozen doughnuts. Very unpleasant image, still receiving shock therapy to suppress that particular traumatizing conversation; so please, spare me and don't accuse me of owning the legends of the tarot either.

* * *

FWI: I am not as talented as the Black Rose; her fics are on a greater skill level than we shall ever know--I worship her. You should too. +inconspicuously flicks mind control machine to 'on'+ 

/blah/ past speech or action, usually paralleled to the current situation

_

* * *

The ice is thin,  
__Come on, dive in.  
__See beneath my loathsome skin lie  
__secrets almost forgotten.  
__--Sarah McLachlan "Ice" _

* * *

Plymouth, Massachusetts 

Greenbryer: resort, hotel, hidden conference base

* * *

She had been pulled from her reverie. 

The voice sounded unsure of the owner, as if some breach of great taboo had struck; that he was performing some sort of heinous act by addressing her by common title and last name. "Vice Foreign Minister Dorlian?" He prodded again hesitantly.

_There was a little girl sitting upright on the hospital bed. She didn't know how she knew this was a hospital or who the bed was the property of; perhaps it was the odd, sick smell that made her feel funny and her stomach convulse. Perhaps it was the claustrophobic quality in the too-white room, with its pasty walls and ashen textures. _

In the presence of some women, an unachievable state of perfect grace and elegance can be felt. Vice Foreign Minister Dorlian fights to achieve this every day, every minute, every second to make her existence worthwhile. Relena looks up from the file packet into the eyes of the nervous president and bows her head in respect. Maybe it's the look in her eyes or the calmness of her posture that forces him to relax and his gaze soften…or maybe she thinks too highly of herself.

_This place felt empty. She discerned somehow that this place shouldn't be so quiet…something was wrong with no people rushing back and forth…was she alone? _

"The information," he says, gesturing to everyone in the room, "shows the latest proposals from the Preventers." He smiles in a forced kind of way displaying that he does not find this pitch amusing in the very least.

_But there was as far more pressing matter at hand. She stared at the mirror opposite her in the innocent, timid fashion of grace that only children could ever possess. _

A rustle two seats down from him. "This amount to launch what will most likely be another failed attempt, a drainage on our budgets?" The Russian minister snorts, dropping the folder on the table. A complex graph catches her soft eyes; she changes gears and instead of reading the proposal goes through her copy of the file again to find it.

_She saw two eyes._

The representative from L4 scratches the back of his head. The colony is under pressure with a new election coming up. He is nervous about anything, yet desperate for anything to boost his chance for another term in office. He is a fool, she admits sadly: he wants to make everyone happy. She had wanted that once. Pity it could never be done, shame he didn't know his history. "What are the gains?"

_She saw one nose. She almost smiled because yes, there were two sides to it, mommy!_

The president sighs, this apparently his point all along…Relena knows he will soon cut the dramatics and drop the bombshell. He nods to a staff member standing close by, who walks over to the CD projector and flips on the switch. Another member turns off the lights and they are all momentarily (and ironically) blinded by the sudden darkness.

_Her head hurt! What had she, who? But it was gone now. She watched as she bit her lip…yes she had a pair of those too. _

They've been arguing about this project for months, this being their sixth meeting on the same issue.

_Slowly, she removed the crisp, uniform white sheets. _

"Obviously, we'll have a definite defense." The Japanese emperor said softly. She likes this man, how he can be both naive and wise, strong and aged…how long before she could achieve this pinnacle of brilliance?

_Tiny feet. They touched the biting cold floor of the agreeable asylum…but that didn't matter right then. _

"But how do we know the people are even ready for such a symbol?" The French leader sighs as the 3D image loads. "The final death count for the Eve Wars and the Ark incident still has yet to be truly known." His eyes darken at the statistics. "We are all still finding bodies, on earth, in space. Panic, or worse, suspicion upon our new nations and politics are the last thing we need right now."

_The hospital gown made her look like the angels in papa's books. _

"And what of the ideas behind it?" The English King nods at the African Minister, sitting back in his chair. "I highly doubt the press will ever support the truth. As soon as we 'okay' this, articles and news casts about briberies and infiltrations will give us the biggest backlash since the collapse of Louis XVI."

_Papa…that meant something (angels, books?), but unfortunately it was a something her confused mind couldn't discern; too many thoughts that didn't make sense clogged her mind. _

There is great unanimous agreement throughout the room, a flinch from the American President at the unspoken threat: _Watergate_.

_She was getter closer to the mirror. _

Her fingers pull out the sheet and she licks her dry lips. The Prime Minister, Chinese Wang Wei, follows her gaze as her eyes flick from the digital icon to the printout table. She quickly takes in the arrows pointing to information, percentages, and references on other pages of the report. She points to the page number and he gets it out as well, understanding her angle.

_Eight freckles on her nose._

This is the waltz of the Congress of Vienna, this is the tactic of the aristocracy, the hidden messages, the dancing promises.

"If something goes wrong?" The L1 diplomat's voice rings out from the throng of low, arguing chatter beginning to break out. Again. "We can't have another mishap. I'm not putting the Preventers down, but if we are going to be able to cooperate with each other and the Preventers…well, I just can't see this," he gestured, "working; and I am not even talking about this project in the long term."

_She touched the mirror. That was cold too. _

The American president thinks for a moment, then: "How do we know the citizens are even ready for another appearance of these things? There are so many memories that I'm sure many families want to forget. It's only been three years since Treize Kushranada's daughter led a full out attack…resulting in the last of the rebel effort going out in smoke—literally."

_And then it hit her. _

She's choosing her moment. She closes her eyes for a few seconds to make certain what she has to say will be understood…and will therefore happen. Politics is, by nature, a game of chess; strategies the key to success. If one would fail…one would lose everything. It is comforting for her to notice the Chinese man is content; when she opens her eyes she can feel him looking at her with his ancient eyes of times gone by as if to give her his long-cherished trust. She will need it to thread her own long-cherished wish here, at this place that was not supposed to exist.

_She knew the nose, the eyes, ears, and the hair. It was the whole of it that made her scream; knowing inside that no one could hear her or would come. _

"Vice Foreign Minister Dorlian? What do you think?" Always, always…

_The face looking reeling back at her she didn't know. _

"Vice Foreign Minister Dorlian?"

* * *

When Relena Peacecraft opens her eyes after a nightmare, she doesn't gasp with fear; nor, do her eyes bolt open in the adrenaline to embrace reality. She has grown into being a silent person by nature, preferring to use words at the height of their vocabulary—and refuses to waste them on silly exclamations, no, no longer. Her eyes open slowly, tranquil and familiar with the bridged gate of fantasy and veracity. Her fists are not clenched with trepidation at memoir, they remain as relaxed as when she had been awake and shaking them with fellow politicians and leaders. Yes, her handshake is quiet, soft as the fur of a panther just so to make them forget her talons and teeth. 

Unlike in romanticized books and two-star movies, Relena Dorlian does not push the events of the past away in fear or clenches her body that is slick with terror-sweat—she embraces them, and her body is calm. To her facing the blockading mountains of one's own fears help shape the end result of one's own image to the public.

And even to ex-queens, especially those who once ruled the world, the image displayed to the public must be a perfect presentation…and if anyone would ever find out the truth, she would be slaughtered mercilessly by the executioner.

The driver seems to have rolled up the front panel; Relena notices that she can no longer see the back of his head and cap (something she was becoming familiar with) through the tinted glass.

It is only 5 o'clock according to her glittering Rolex. She should not have fallen asleep. As much as the uncivilized writings of the media would like to believe, Relena was getting as much sleep as any politician.

She does not bother to look at the coffee cup, she knows now why the china set had been changed, now knows why it landed so without a sound to the padded carpet.

Relena Peacecraft inhales.

Relena Dorlian exhales.

_Quiet, quiet; stay quiet._ Her breathing does not change. It was a small blessing it hadn't when she slipped out of the inducer's spell.

It is no surprise to her that instead of the turning left at the last exit towards her hotel (the lodging itself sworn her residence to secrecy of her stay)…the stark black limousine drives by instead, without even the exclamation of blunder.

Relena Peacecraft inhales.

Relena Dorlian exhales.

_Quiet_. Her heart doesn't hammer—it has been trained to be still. Slowly she shifts her arm just so, just enough pressure on the switch on the door ledge to drop down the panel. She shifts her breathing inward hard through her nose and loudly moves her legs and…

Quiet. Be still.

He was not turning around.

The still eyes do not blink, her heart rate does not speed up, and her hands do not perspire. Relena prides herself in being the unreachable statue on the tall pedestal society had placed her on since the day she was born.

It is the only way to survive.

Calculating the possibilities of their newfound direction, the blond woman focuses on decreasing the final effects of the drug. She clenches her jaw and shakes her leg in place carefully to increase the adrenaline hormone. She reflects on things that terrified her in her girl-child dreams: the coldness of her brother's voice, the blasts of mobile suits, and the pressure of the male dominant politics. She halts her stationary exercise when the desired effect has occurred, defeated only by a blast of frigid water of course, and she glances at her passing surroundings with new eyes.

Relena is not familiar with the area, but she is not worried yet. She knows that this man is clever…but not wise. She knows that the body of her real driver is probably in the trunk and had died by result of choking…nothing messy or loud to cause alarm.

She gathers the neighborhood setting, holding it close like desperate breaths (but she is far from sobbing cries of desperation). She concludes that this is a vicinity upper-class enough that a limo would cause no commotion or awe, but discreet and where the workers were busy with their own lives…and bills to pay. The ex-queen also concludes that, like others, this one will probably take her to a deserted parking lot, choke her with a follow through of suffocation or stabbing, throw her limp body into the nearest dumpster and leave, judging by the way the car currently carried itself. She scans his posture and how he doesn't bother to check in the mirror to see if she is awake…this tells her that this one is not above the traditional scenario of "kill big politician in the alley." But it also proves an underlying characteristic: he is overconfident, pompous. It is possible for him to slip a mistake into the depressing equation.

Dusk has arrived, she notices fleetingly. She focuses on the colors and texture of the artificial colony sun rather than street signs.

Soon there would be no need.

Her eyes flick to the rear-view mirror, only to see a set of shaded eyes looking back at her. For a moment, the limousine wavers between two lanes. An impatient truck honks in protest for not setting on the blinker soon enough. The man's eyebrows widen as his eyes presumably bore into hers and the last Peacecraft stares back at him, indifferent and tired.

After a moment, the eyes go back to the road.

Relena sighs and watches the citizens carrying on with their daily lives; she unbuckles her seat belt knowing full well that now that he knows she is conscious and she won't need it much longer.

Her stomach does not clench when the car pulls into the predicted, inconspicuous parking lot, and the darkness does not frighten her as she hears the driver door slam. When the door opens, she bites down the habit to extend her hand.

As she emerges Relena thinks of the people on L4, oblivious that a political leader was under the attempt of assassination not three blocks from their location and presence. But she remains silent and docile and does not scream for help, once more, her mind unconsciously knows there is no need, no rush.

After a few moments of quiet contemplation she discovers that she is happy that they're ignorant souls, because to her there is no need for anyone to panic over this. She decided long ago that she never wanted there to be any fuss over her if she should leave.

She does not listen as the man tells her his reasons for killing her (after a while the facts meld with their opinions, and Relena does not want to be concerned because it's too late), and she doesn't trouble herself to bother her conscience about it. Relena Dorlian is counting down; Relena Peacecraft clings to the thought briefly that she feels pity for this man…and then lets it go and die quietly.

Quite an ironic choice of phrase.

At twenty-three, the slim Minister turns away and focuses her attention on her breathing and the faded color of the brick wall. The man snarls something (troublesome bitch, hypocrite, she's heard them all) and—She blocks out the sudden cries from the would-be. Knowing that it's over she slips back into the vehicle; she picks up the fallen tea cup and places it on top of the car before she sits again and buckles her seat belt.

Is there a God that delivers restoration to crushed hopes, from their hardships? To determine death, and bestow bounty…she only wanted answers and the starving child only wanted bread.

She folds her hands in her lap and lets the loose strands of hair fall over her face. She is suddenly tired, drained from the sudden thirty seconds in which the desire to stop her work went up like a loose New York firecracker.

Because at times like this it seems so meaningless, her intended message once again not properly delivered and even less properly received. And she thinks to herself that this is her fault; if she was honest and truthful and really represented world peace, these events would not happen and everyone would be happy.

But she cannot be sincere and open and truly deliver her point, because humanity is not ready and never will be ready for the most logical answer to all of their problems.

She thinks of Quatre, pacing in front of his lawyer as he prepares to go to court for accusations of still supporting military warfare and terrorism and fuming at the atrocities of political scandal in his quiet way. She thinks of how she knows he won't ask for her help and sighs again: she would never insult the fair Arabian, not after his humble kindness he bestowed upon her times of need. She wants to ask if he misses his Gundam, Sandrock, for a peculiar reason she can no longer remember, something she had forgotten to do during the Eve Wars that had long ago lost its value. She is found doing this often.

She hears the clink of the chipped piece of china as it is expertly dropped into an airtight, plastic bag for evidence from behind the tinted, bulletproof window. Routinely. Good. A few moments later, the engine is called up and they pull away.

Relena Peacecraft does not like being a living legend; she does not know how to act or live to fulfill this role. She thinks of Treize, the man who dragged her into this world, and if this was the dream he had envisioned or if they have all failed…if she has failed.

* * *

When the door is opened for her, Relena always first gives her coat to Pagan; she does not question how the elderly man knows where to wait for her, or when she will come through the rotating brass doors. She always tries not to hear the babble of reporters clacking on the marble and fights the need to squint through the haze of camera light flashes. Routinely she bites down the evil, malicious urge to scream profanities at their ridiculous questions; she refuses for those actions to ever be apart of her. Staff members and security guards shove them away indifferently. While they're distracted she goes to the elevator that is blocked off by an "under repair" sign. She ignores this sign and touches the call button and the doors instantly respond because of the camera positioned directly across. She walks in accompanied by the figure who disposed of the hired gunner. 

_She does not ask what he did with the man_. Perhaps he killed him; perhaps he contacted L4's central intelligence agency, perhaps both…perhaps neither. Routinely, she does not ask because she does not want to know.

At the fifth floor, the fifth sin, the elevator pings and they both step out in silence. It is not an awkward silence because Relena is not an awkward person; similarly, the silence is not companionable because Relena and this man know they are not companions.

The hallway is deserted. The entire floor she currently exits upon is deserted. The head of security informed her that to everyone's knowledge, except her and a select few, all rooms on this floor are currently occupied, booked or something or another, and none would ever care to question—or be given a reason to question—otherwise.

A passing thought reflects how it creates a frightening loneliness.

Relena watches the man slide the room key and disappear inside, once the red light flashes to green. Routinely, she waits a certain number of minutes before following in just like he told her to do.

The Bonaparte Organization was probably behind the attempt after her little tiff United Nation's conference.

Don't think about it, this is your willing, gilded cage.

At least Prime Minister Wang Wei had been pleased with her, supported her manipulation eroding constitutional liberty…she had not _wanted_ to do that…but he had supported her, he knew she had no choice…Good God, what if they had gone after him as well? Good God, of course they would…Her nails are blocked from scratching the plastic surface by her white leather gloves.

She takes them off.

Good God.

'You will know by the six o'clock news.'

She makes tea.

Routinely, she takes out the standard set of coffee mugs by the sink and takes out two sugar packets. When the water boils, she pours them both to the brim with the tea bag (chamomile, she likes tranquil sweet-honey chamomile) and mixes the contents together. She pours some of the honey the maids left her that morning into the first cup.

Routinely, she realizes that she does not know if he likes honey or even sugar in his tea, so her hand hovering with the packet freezes, the thick amber droplet quivers as much as her eyes and retracts from his cup and she leaves it out just like the tears.

They fear her still, that is what today means. But these radicals do not see that she is isolated, too weak to retain the power they saw, why did no one else see that?

She sets the cups down on the fake-wood table just as the tall man emerges from the neighboring room. He has just finished sweeping the place in case of bugs or bombs or other dangerous atrocities, and, routinely, she had not waited outside for his report.

Routinely, she sits down and offers him a seat and the remaining cup with a universal gesture.

Routinely, he says nothing; Trowa Barton, when feeling kind, only shakes his head and walks out, leaving her alone with an empty mug and a tired mind…and another cup of cold tea. Relena does not know why she always makes the second cup.

She asks herself if she's lonely and maybe that's why she doesn't change out of her suit yet…and why she doesn't think of Heero anymore.

Ironic.

But then, the second wrong always makes you feel right; she wraps her arms around herself for a warmth and security that doesn't exist, considers praying for Minister Wang Wei.

She stood up and said, "Gentlemen, I believe I should direct out attention to the most important of our points, we must remember what we are here for," and they believed her when she told them what they should believe.

'You sick, repulsive snake.'

Her dream…/the mirror was cold/…she'd been older, not an infant, that time and it had been different. The hospital she hadn't recognized (she'd been older that time… that time)…

The Foreign Minister hears the door click, a reminder that she should bolt the locks like she does every night.

She does not know where he (and she still has yet to figure out if it's Trowa or Yuy she wonders about) goes after the moon rises and she accepts that she never will.

_Routinely. _Her tongue lingers on the top of her palate as she examines its pronouncement. She loathes that word…

_

* * *

_

_Listen, late last night I heard the screen door slam  
__And a big yellow taxi took my girl away  
__Now don't it always seem to go  
__That you don't know what you got till it's gone  
__They paved paradise and put in a parking lot  
__Why do you want it?  
__Why do you want it?  
__--Counting Crows_

_

* * *

_

_Preview: _

All the cards in the end obey the Queen of Cups. Even the King could never surpass her wisdom, for he is a man, after all. This is why she sits on the throne with the look of a caged bird, and, in the end, that is what she is. _Because she cannot remember when it was the first cup shattered._

And in the meantime the Hangman is presented upside down.

_------------------------------------------------------------------_

The fifth sin is anger, of the seven sins; Relena was reflecting on the constant irony of her circumstance.

And for a long-time, the Greenbryer hotel was not supposed to exist, that's right; it was a base for the president to flee to in case of nuclear attack. After 9/11, the president was flown there because the communications unit was still intact to allow him to converse with the other allied nations.

Right, as in every Gundam Wing, Relena x Heero piece, that darn Relena is always the victim of an assassination attempt. WHAT IS SHE—A MAGNET? But Heero didn't save her! So there! XP

…And I have no idea who I'm talking to…


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: Hanged Man

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. I have tried…and fled in fear from threats of being raped by a dozen doughnuts. Very unpleasant, still receiving shock therapy to suppress that particular traumatizing event; so please, spare me and don't accuse me of owning the legends of the tarot either. FWI: I am not as talented as the Black Rose; her fics are on a greater skill level than we shall ever know--I worship her. You should too. +inconspicuously flicks mind control machine to 'on'+

A/N: Curious readers, dare there be a writer so sick to have Dr J come up with Relena? 3 definitely read one too many fics by warped POTO writers…so I guess that's my **'warning' to Kamineko**: think Fry in an R-rated Alice in Wonderland horror game with the Milgram obedience experiments and you get the idea. If Milgram makes you scared, I suggest you walk away, some people are going to get crazy.

* * *

LETTING GO  
REVERSAL  
SUSPENSION  
SACRIFICE

letting go  
having an emotional release  
accepting what is  
surrendering to experience  
ending the struggle  
being vulnerable and open  
giving up control  
accepting God's will

reversing  
turning the world around  
changing your mind  
overturning old priorities  
seeing from a new angle  
upending the old order  
doing an about-face

suspending action  
pausing to reflect  
feeling outside of time  
taking time to just be  
giving up urgency  
living in the moment  
waiting for the best opportunity

sacrificing  
being a martyr  
renouncing a claim  
putting self-interest aside  
going one step back to go two steps forward  
giving up for a higher cause  
putting others first

* * *

Now, now, baby  
This is textbook stuff  
These are the A...B...C's  
of growing up

I watch you slowly winding down  
...And you know I love you, yes..

--Imogen Heap, Speeding Cars

* * *

Florence, Italy

0500

* * *

Quiet.

--_A hypothesis gained credibility not so much from external proofs as form the logical tightness of arguments used to support it. The decisive test was how lucid and irrefutable a statement appeared to be to the thinking mind, not whether it could be demonstrated by experiments. Descartes thus applied what he considered the method of science to all of knowledge. Not only the phenomena of nature but all truth had to be investigated according to the methods of the scientists. At the same time, his insistence on stricter definitions of cause and effect helped create a general scientific and intellectual theory known an as mechanism. In its simplest form, mechanism hold that the entire universe including human beings, can be regarded as a complicated machine and thus subject to strict and physic principles. The arm is like a lever the elbow is like a hinge and so on. Even an emotion is more than a simple response to a definable stimulus. This view was influence philosophers for generations_—

Awake.

And there is the soft, glowing pulse of the sun (he'd left the window open again), and this time …it's real.

He stares at the ceiling, watching the fan circle for a while and remembers the last time he'd done that someone died.

But he doesn't stop. Maybe he hopes that one day it would be him. His eyes narrow in disgust—no, no he doesn't. He doesn't want to waste his gift from… He finally sits up, running a hand through his messy hair and stretches out a kink in his neck. The silence is disturbed only by the metallic hum of a completely inconspicuous hard drive.

His new ideal: Live every day inconspicuous, in solitude; in silence. He likes the last part very much.

Sometimes he goes into the city and walks among the crowds, carefully adjusting to being around many people with no objective in mind. Different and awkward at first, to not be so focused on the mission instead of being part of a chattering, busy throng.

But again, it is real, and overtime the awkward emotions gradually faded, like everything/one else, thankfully.

He exhales slowly, relaxing his tense muscles; tense because nothing worth being tense over had occurred and he guesses his reaction, as usual, shows a result of driven psychotic paranoia.

At least that's what Duo said, or something like it at least. Heero hadn't been paying attention, what with the hundred of large, new, computer-strategizing, in-every-way-better-than-yours-nah-nah automatons approaching with high-fusion cannons pointing at them when he'd said it. But the braided pilot always held an opinion about something, and location be damned when he received one. Heero hasn't heard from him since the Pacifist Battle, but then, he's unlisted and doesn't even possess a cell phone. It makes him feel light (dare he breathe out 'carefree'?)…detached and…liberated.

Quatre had offered safe haven on L3, a job, a secure housing placement—anything he wanted, the blue eyes promised with a smile and it would have been very tempting to anyone else.

_He was not anyone else. _

That was a while ago. He was on L1 then (maybe the braided baka was right; psychotic closure or whatever, maybe he should read up on that) and that was before the rumors began anyway. Dark eyes that waver in the color spectrum narrow in disgust of the ignorant populace, so ready to turn their backs on one who lost everything to save them.

Then he remembers he did the same thing. He lowers his hand from his hair and looks out the window that faces the city.

He had turned away.

He resides in one of the rooms on the highest floor, some kind of freak giving into the born need to be able to see everything, maybe just to know it's safe. But that's all right, one less mountainous hurdle in his way to slowly sooth, convince his fists to relax, there's no danger not anymore because someone made sure of that (older eyes now, she's not a child)...

He picks up the water bottle laying on the wooden nightstand from Algeria (that's what QVC told him, anyway) and downs half of it in one gulp. It is five a.m. but every day, summer or winter, rain or shine, his rises early. It used to be two forty-five a.m.; he's getting better.

Heero showers under the hot stream of the tap and dresses for his morning jog. He can't help it; he has to shower immediately when he wakes, even if to exercise. Maybe that's in a book too. But after he stretches (actually unnecessary for him, but he tries) and before he leaves, he comes up to the rooftop terrace atop that highest apartment he could find in this unique haven. From there he decides where to go: the river or the park? Or the open green lands that haven't faded into stores and fast food markets? Or to the sea that is natural, past the vast neighborhoods so full of romantic wealth and filth, extravagance and poverty, perfection and crime?

'There's peace now, though.' A voice whispers quietly to him, everyday. 'The change is coming quickly now with each sunrise, she is actually doing it.'

Everyday, he quickly makes a decision before his thoughts wander where they shouldn't, because he has a choice for once and he wants it to stay that way. He opts for the park, empty but for a few joggers and walkers like him before going to work.

It feels so odd to say that word; he knows it's because…because he knows he won't die at the shift's end (he'd already calculated it), it won't affect people, nothing weighted so heavily, he wasn't brought up for it _he had chosen it himself._

A small, almost undetectable emotion pounds somewhere very deep inside of him, but it's there nevertheless and he notices it because he never misses anything—he's so fucking perfect. He's proud, just a little, but just by working on it a little every day it grows, that he has control over his life and he's not following any other person's agenda _only his own_.

It's that type of exhilaration that exists as the closest thing to happiness that he's ever had.

So he runs, and lives: palace churches flash still and silent down the street and he feels calm. The streetlights dim as the natural _real_ light of the sun grows brighter.

He smiles, because on L1 there is no mist that lifts like this, a simple beauty of mystery the labs haven't "corrected" yet. But it's _here_, and it smells so fresh and wonderful. Man could exist on space colonies, but they were far from being God and thinking of the simplest pieces of perfection; this suited Heero just fine, and it was just as well because there was no God.

_/I don't believe in God/_

He runs faster.

_/Her face was so close and with a jolt he realized it was because he was pulling her/_

She had been smiling in the camera as softly as always, and just like everyone else he wonders who it was for: "I believe in you."

He was almost there…

* * *

"Buona mattina."

The voice was muffled from behind the newspaper when Heero walked through the marble doors at 0605. He froze midway through straightening his tie; it is a shame the voice could not hear the codings zipping across his eyes for all the ways to kill a man without him screaming. Just the desk clerk, quiet left brain. The head from behind did not bother to look over his newspaper, or ask for his credentials. And why should he?

Relax.

"Mattina." Heero touches the call button and suppressed a sigh when the light remained stationary at floor twelve. But Dante requires utmost care in handling, and the tight security and research team probably slowed things down a bit this morning.

"Don't bother," the voice, which now sounds as if it were full of pastry, garbles. Between munches Heero fathoms he is being told to take the stairs.

Oh well.

"Ahh, Fell." He turns and an old, brisk woman carrying a briefcase and a sound loud of files spins through the doors.

Sleep well?

Enough.

Bully for you. Elevator jammed?

They're taking their time with Dante.

Well then. Here. Take these to Alexander's door for filing on your way up.

And then she is gone, to wherever large, rich and arthritic women go when they're trying to save the cultural world for humanity.

He flips through some of the documents going up the polished staircase without reading them. Alexander Pazzi resides on the fifth floor with Acquisitioned Artifacts Pertaining to Religious Affiliation, and yes it says all of that on the floor guide. It's necessary, humans need definition; simplicity is all too often found with flaw…_she_ never mixed the two—

"My good friend Tenou Fell."

"Your friendly words don't match your unwelcome expression, Pazzi."

"That's because I know that big ass stack of files you've got is for me," Alexander put his coffee cup down and attempted to make more space on his cluttered desk. "Caffé?"

"No."

"Soddisfacciasi."

I will, he assured him.

Pazzi gestures absently, going back to typing. Okie dokie then, put the bottom five on the floor by the Babylonian report, and the rest I'll take now…thanks—oof! The files landed unbalanced but he caught them all the same.

Heero pauses at the door and says that Dante was taking longer than expected; this causes Pazzi to frown because that means maintenance hadn't been able to get through yet.

Pazzi mutters darkly under his breath, then tells his companion about the group that hoodwinked a security guard into letting them see the works first. Then that guy's boss showed up and… "Turisti," Alexander continues darkly, "Pensano che conoscano tutto…"

"La maggioranza é Americani," the sharp voice interrupts, making the Italian man nearly drop his coffee. She tells Heero some recordings the dying Really Useful Company let out from retired _Phantom of the Opera_ are on his desk if he runs out of things to do. She says they are the larger compact disk, but should be easy to transfer to a sound byte. Oh, and walk through the series _Il Monstro_ for one last screen check.

"And what may I ask are you doing?" Madam Bunchen snaps at Pazzi, who is poised with a donut halfway to his open mouth. "Do I pay you to watch television at this institution?"

"Pay is hardly the correct word." Pazzi's gaze doesn't move from the screen. "Delegates from the big boss countries arguing again about humanity, even though we all know there's money somewhere." His tone is flat with disgust, but it changes completely in his next sentence, "But Vice Foreign Minister Dorlian is going to speak for the Prime in a sec—there!" He turns up the volume, and, if possible, falls deeply than before.

The bored chatter explodes into applause and countless questions as she comes to the microphone. Her face powdered, her eyes painted, her suit pressed: the political darling of earth and space smiles in that kind and quiet way she is known for.

"You have to learn that to love is even better," she begins, the camera shifting so the viewers could see her talking to ministers on the side, to the crowd before her, to the waiting photographers. "To be kind is even better. In killing you crush a universe of beliefs and feeling and generations in that one person whom you kill." The explosion in Egypt flashed behind her on the screen. "But when you do kindness, it's like dropping a pebble in the great ocean.

"Dear people, we must banish the dark passions of terrorism. Remember those around you, who centre all their hopes in you. Have we lost the power of rendering one another happy? While we love, while we are true to each other, here in peace, we may reap every tranquil blessing—what can disturb our peace?" She bowed her head. "I myself will be present at the constitutional appeals for the Basques with the Egyptian and French ministers. Together we can stop this and prove that humanity has evolved beyond such violent ignorance."

Pazzi called her beautiful, his eyes rapturous. Lady Vasquez clucked in her mouth. Neither noticed their companion stiffen.

Beautiful? Experience and reason whispered in his ear promptly, viciously that beauty such as hers had a purpose, usually that purpose was deceit or to distract—

And could not such words from her whom all unconsciously prized before every other gift of fortunes bestowed suffice to chase away the fiend that lurked in the heart? Even as she spoke cameras, viewers, reporters, all drew nearer to her, as if in terror, until that very moment the destroyer come near to rob of her.

"She's much too thin—look at her wrists!" Bunchen fussed, switching off the set. "Come now, there is much to do before the Chinese consulet's pieces can be dissected."

"And if they decide for the free-trade act?" Pazzi prompts, stirring more cream in his coffee. "How do you think that will affect Middle East gifts? They will not be so giving of their ancient scrolls to us if they are free to do so among American collectors—we are too closely tied to the Church."

"If the world should fall apart, we continue to take our chances." She said crisply. "I hired you to do things, not think about whether you should do them!" She looked at his desk and picked up the newspaper. "That's what _they_ are supposed to do," the snapshot of the French Minister and German king with an Arab politician.

_The Euro Brings a Rare Smile_, the heading read.

* * *

"Tenou" takes time to see an etching on the forth floor. An etching. Not a large elaborate canvass with an overly extravagant frame, just a small piece of faded paper from the seventeenth century HE (Hypothetical Era: Before Any Space Colonial Expansion). The design was Spanish solider in full regalia, his helmet plumed with the extravagant feathers and his trousers puffed with bows. It showed how a pikeman was supposed to crouch and hold his weapons (stabilizing his pike against his foot) when facing a cavalry charge. He stared at the anonymous engraving, the style not so different from Jacques de Ghyen. Not that that means anything to the average person. It's simplistic, almost crude in its style.

_Waffenhandlung_, the little bronze plaque read. German.

He doesn't visit this because it is a favorite. Not at all—it is very crude after all.

He'd seen this before in Berlin, at the Deutches Historisches Museum. It was a leftover, tarnished remainder from a manual from the Thirty Year's War.

Dr. J was in his head and he could remember every word: 'The expansion of armies and the professionalization of war were reflected in the founding of military academies and in the growing acceptance of one, specific notion: that warfare was a science. Are you listening to me boy? A _science._ See here, there was now a market for published manuals because of this, especially if they had illustrations like this one. Think, boy, think. Put it together. Now tell me if people just don't change much. Do they? _Do they_…'

It was as if the old man had simply walked away, the teacher waiting for his apprentice in the next room. The Thirty Year's War—that was when gunpowder had been introduced and cavalry was realized as suicide, obsolete.

—_human beings, can be regarded as a complicated machine and thus subject to strict and physic principles. The arm is like a lever the elbow is like a hinge and so on. Even an emotion is more than a simple response to a definable stimulus. This view was influence philosophers for generations—_

* * *

Weeks passed. He spoke Arabic without thinking of Quatre. Pazzi ate…in a fassion, and he didn't think of Duo. He watched the news and she—turned it off, worked with the metallic death machines in the museum. He was helping Pazzi direct the dragon.

It was lunch time so the guards were gone and the truck had come late. His muscles were purring contentedly at the slightest effort—exited after being told to sleep for so long.

"Oo shure you on't leedny elp uddy?" Pazzi sputtered through his apple, leaning against the wall, grinning. He swallowed. "Cos I'd be glad to help, yup, just say the word and I'm there." He hadn't even noticed Pazzi had let go.

"I want this." He said.

Pazzi rolled his eyes.

Once it was upright he took the forbidden moment to trace his fingertips on the sharp fangs. How did someone make this? Not with a chisel, it had to be more. Its eyes were not hateful or evil, just…

Powerful.

Dragons appeared in the mythologies and folk traditions of every culture around the world—they had no way of communicating with one another. The question fascinates and puzzles him: how did so many of them come up with the same mythical beast?

The ferocious creature snarls from the old stone, an unexplored mystery daring one to draw closer to the taloned claw.

Was that part of the human machine, too?

'I am not a machine.'

But he was, once.

* * *

Judith. She was so bold to kill her insane husband, but she also was less in Tenou's eyes at the lack of any memory in hers as she did so. Had she detached herself as the knife slid through the layers of soft flesh and blood, _his_ eyes she'd once looked into and said "I do" (whether she did or not, back then)—

"Avete programmi?"

He closed his eyes and sighed. "No."

Pazzi grinned. "Data attraente," he said happily. "Sapete é, non potete mancare. É preso la cura di se parto?" His eyes begged. Pazzi had been telling anyone who would stand still long enough to listen how…well, something about the woman…Heero had a gift of being able to stand still while looking as if he were listening. Immunity developed, perhaps, soon after meeting a braided pilot.

Go ahead, he told him.

"Ah! Grazi, Tenou, grazi!" If he smiled any wider he would stretch his face. I owe you!

They gazed at the bronze fury that was Judith: the proud woman snarling hate as she pulled, and Hercules: the fallen warrior a drunken mess and his eyes not seeing the spear about to rip into his belly.

"Bello." Alexander said softly.

Yes, Heero told him, and went back to ignoring him.

There was a reason he was here. It was strange how he'd found this place, the grand institution in general. These quiet walls…had he just dropped from the sky and landed here? These artists, something was different inside around him. His lateralized left grew quiet and the clicking didn't plague so often, like right after he'd destroyed ZERO.

But these artists…how there was something more to these pieces that he, Dr J's robot monkey, couldn't touch.

How do you train a man to correlate to an independent (almost conscious) machine?

A Frenchman, Dr. J made the first concentrated attempt to apply the new methods of behavioral science to the untested theories of brain chemistry, and in so doing, he laid the foundation for the modern philosophy for the perfect soldier. The impulse behind his work was his realization that for all the importance of observation rays and virtual training experiments, people can be deceived by their senses. In order to find some loophole, therefore, he decided to apply Ricci's principle of doubt—the refusal to accept any authority without strict verification—to all of the boy's knowledge.

He began with the assumption that he, the boy, could know unquestionably only one thing during martial hesitation: that he was doubting. This assumption allowed the doctor to proceed to Descartes "I think, therefore I am" principle, because the act of doubting proved he was thinking, and thinking, in turn, demonstrated his existence.

/Boy, are you listening to me/

From the proof of his own existence he derived a crucial statement: that whatever is clearly and distinctly thought must be true. This same assertion had enabled Descartes centuries ago to construct a proof of even God's existence: "We cannot fail to realize that we are imperfect and we must therefore have an idea of perfection against which we may be measured. If we have a clear idea of what perfection is, then it must exist; hence its name is God."

And so, the procedure of his creation was set into motion.

To create the perfect soldier he must mold a creature that could not doubt.

_In order for a creature to not doubt he could not exist_.

'I am not a thing, I am not a machine,' he could think it strongly, passionately even. 'I think for myself…'

_In order for him not to exist, _

'I _think_.'

_He could…not…_

Somewhere that night he heard the door creaking shut and the darkness creeping in.

* * *

Roses. The international – and perhaps intergalactic – symbol of love.

Love. Something he had never known. So why did he pause in front of such a place?

Why did he purchase?

This was the unanswerable conundrum that preyed upon the mind as he twirled the very flower in question between his fingertips each day as he crossed the bridge and saw the daughters. The streets of Italy, Poland, and Russia are filled with them, though respectfully they grow more violent in each country: runaways who don't realize how much they still have to lose once everything has been taken from them. Most are swept into the arms of the Church, others submit and stumble through hazes of crack and acid. These two daughters are looking for their father. They sold flowers without their mother's knowledge so they can buy him a rosary from the pope to save his soul.

Lady Vasquez picked them up every now and again with euros, chiding them on the dangers with Il Monstro still stalking the streets.

He doesn't even believe in God, but he buys one every day from the one little girl with the eyes and dress blue, hair gold as skin. It's never red, it's yellow, white, or sometimes a fantastic orange, the roses.

He reflected in the garden of good and evil, where couples used to frequent but don't any longer with Il Monstro still on the prowl.

He broke the flower and watches the briefest moment when it still remains whole in his hand. Then petal by petal it peels away in the air to reveal his scarred hands. Hours pass, hours pass until he slept in his body there, listening to the drowsy flowers next to his ears, and looking up into the branches of the olive tree now and then to see the bird nest there, and the distant sounds of the city came to him, became a music to him. And when he dreamed, it was of gardens, and light and fruit trees and a marble angel he couldn't touch (and she had adult eyes blue wide) and an emotion he didn't understand…but felt quite...wonderful.

_And those words so much sweeter than the air whispered into his waking dream: "In killing we crush…we have to learn that to love is better…"_

He existed but…there was no doubt.

'_Give...'_

It was like he was telling the little girl to...giving her...

_'Give anyone hope.'_

Her voice always did that to him…

_

* * *

But you can't__ stop thinking about her  
She's so pretty; she's so damn _right  
_You never get tired of thinking  
Of her all night.  
And you can't stop thinking about her  
No, you can't stop thinking about her  
-- Rachel Yamagata, Worn Down_can'tright 

_Still floating soft  
I am dreaming and I'm glad I lost  
And still with my fingers  
I'm drawing circles in the water  
In the water  
And still, still you're always there_

_--Eisley, Lost at Sea_

* * *

The first quote was from page 553 of Western Heritage.

Hmm, Heero's neuron fires must be really f'ed up...


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three  
Seven Swords

* * *

Disclaimer: I do not own Gundam Wing. I have tried…and fled in fear from threats of being raped by a dozen doughnuts. Very unpleasant, still receiving shock therapy to suppress that particular traumatizing event; so please, spare me and don't accuse me of owning the legends of the tarot either. FWI: I am not as talented as the Black Rose; her fics are on a greater skill level than we shall ever know--I worship her. You should too. +inconspicuously flicks mind control machine to 'on'+

* * *

Meaning  
Striving against opposition too powerful  
overwhelming forces.  
Unstable effort  
Attempt

Reversed  
Arguments  
Uncertain counsel or advice

* * *

India  
Unidentified Village

* * *

_Is this it?  
Is this it? No, No!  
And...Hello, Goodbye  
And we're taking calls_

_...Now what was the question?  
--_Frou Frou, Psychobabble

* * *

The bus crash receives treatment as a regular occurrence; much like the rest of this pitiful region. Environmentalist are outraged at bulldozers taking down a tree for houses, but when it comes to preserving the future in a swollen child in a tax dollar they turn a blind eye. And animal rights activists scream in horror at the treatment of wild animals, but when it is that wild dog that tears a beggar to pieces it's the government's fault for not minding nature.

The rain slows cleanup efforts now. The death last week was 310. Not that any country cares, even their own. He watches the monsoon pound here in Mumbai, already calculating the bacteria fostering in the humid makeshift hospital inside. Despite the pounding rain the temperature remains a solid 95 degrees Fahrenheit, and consequently many of the makeshift doctors along with himself have discarded their shirts, excusing most of the women, of course, but modesty couldn't hold out much longer.

It's not just bacteria he's worried about. Even though the rains are looked upon as miracles for their scarcity, Wufei sees already the looming cripple in food distribution. Already he senses Bombay won't be able to send in anything for days: from his standpoint he can make out what once was the road (the rice paddies, the pineapple fields)…now a new stream clogged with mud and grass.

Someone new who arrived from European ministry just days before this…this whore of a monsoon, comes to join him and sighs. His name is Roy.

"Donald put on the alert for the villagers to stay in their homes," he says offhand, his accent ringing of Czech.

Wufei slowly shakes his head, a sarcastic, pitying smirk broadening there. "They won't stay. They don't understand."

Roy's eyes were wide, his lips move, and Wufei catches a flash of someone he once knew, a prince…but he pushes it away. "…o you mean?"

Wufei pushes off the column with the cheap paint, his arms folded and his eyes narrowed at a point on the ground. "These people are close the brink of starvation, constantly. The U.N.'s World Food Program collapsed on H.E. 2025 with the corruption conspiracies, and conspiracy is all they've come to expect from outsiders since then." Even before that, too. There was a tip of disgust on his tongue but he forced it down. Emergency rations were stacked in the back and ready, but that supply had been dwindling for some time during the drought—nowhere near enough to feed the thousands of people mindlessly flocking to grab whatever they could.

Look at their leader. He was ordered to appear in court for allegedly running over a pedestrian while intoxicated for fleeing the scene. But Mr. Niamey will get little more than a slap on the wrist, Wufei knows, because after all the rich defend their own when the tongues are wagging, or they'll all lose their cars and jewelry and become ordinary.

He steps off the porch and into the rain. It if weren't for the waterproof bug spray he'd applied ten minutes ago, a hoard of biting, disease carrying insects would have been on him in seconds. "To us, the solution to their problem is obvious, that they must adapt to survive in this new age or they'll die," He lifts his head up to the dark sky; the eye hadn't finished its Passover yet and the winds hadn't come back. "To us, it is only common sense to join together and operate in an organized fashion…to pity everyone because we're all on the same level. Don't expect pity, Roy, they'll come at us as a mindless mob if we try to tell them what to do even if it's killing them."

"Where are you going?" He makes no move to follow him and it's only mild curiosity that keeps him here.

"Somewhere to pray."

Fact: The total number of all available products in existence remains beyond all capable understanding, and the memory to name all the materials used in an individual product is impossible.

Fact: All "civilized" human life is sustained at multiple points in their life by machine, microchip, and microbiology, surrounded by surpluses of energy, fuel, finery, and food.

Storage. Archives. Information banks. Hard disk, floppy disk, backup tape, hard copy—everything worth anything somehow duplicated in one form or another and stored.

To anyone this is mind boggling but to Wufei it's only the same basic theory that had created the bamboo scrolls in Shanghai which he had studied under. Not difficult to understand.

And in spite of the entire dazzle in the infomercials, gasoline, and colonies there still exists the "Old World."

Follow the stream into the marshes, into the mountains, into the desert, into the jungle.

"The East" was what they called it, they themselves now reign as the "Superior West." It is all they have, they are not so new anymore: space was the true limitless frontier.

The East, or the Third World, or the Underdeveloped Countries, or the Backwards Countries, or the Primitive Area—it covers continents still where timeless white garments walk their camels through the sandstorm, happy as ever to live among the sun-bright desolation.

In the rice paddies, here in the fields, in the marshes of Iraq, in the villages the world over, men and women stooped to gather their crop as they have since the dawn of their time.

Huge urban outposts rise amid the millions, yet the vast majority of tribes, farmers, weavers, vendors, mothers, monks, beggars, and children remain beyond the reach of Western invention, abundance, medicine, and sanitation.

Fact: Sanitation is _key_.

Wufei already knew that Roy was the type of person who would try to explain that sanitation was the necessary chemical purification of human waste and industrial waste, the purification of drinking water and water for bathing—the nullification of filth in all forms and the maintenance of an environment in which one could be born, give birth, grow up, and die—in maximum security against human or industrial or chemical contamination of any kind.

Nothing matters as much as sanitation, Wufei could hear him saying, Plagues have vanished from the earth due to sanitation.

In the West sanitation was considered a guaranteed given; in the "East" sanitation was viewed with suspicion, or people were simply too numerous to be made to conform to the inevitable habits required by it.

And so, diseases run wild through the jungles; in the marshes; in the deep pockets of vast cities or in the wilderness where the peasants, workers, the fellaheen, still lived as they always had.

Like here.

The night is impossibly loud, a constant din of insects, frogs, and, more distant, monkeys or birds. Something howls from a mile, maybe ten miles away. Wufei finds this no better than the sudden festival the villagers threw for the gods for fertility.

The powers of oblivious denial.

He didn't even try to sleep, but he was woken by a sudden harsh burst that left him wide awake ten minutes ago, and now he's watching the shadows of the night world creep around his walls.

The cot is sopping wet from the heavy, humid air. The monsoon changed course and the winds were fierce but not deadly. This meaning "the trees were uprooted, yes, but in this godforsaken country there's plenty of trees and none of them hit –my- house so the storm wasn't that bad"…

The villagers believed the gods had answered their ritual chants and bead offerings. They wanted to celebrate.

Celebration meant food.

The stockpile vault was empty.

Hunger. There was plenty, and there was hunger. But Wufei isn't just thinking of the people's foolishness here. He thinks globally about food thrown away in the streets of New York while the television program was showing the starving.

It's a matter of distribution.

Light slants in through the window—a headlight—that strikes through the canopy of leaves and illuminating the pale transparency of a spider's web migrating across the room's corners. He gets up as the tires reach his ears, the splash of a vehicle worn and barely able to contain itself having reached its destination.

His body is sticky with sweat and the air's perfume, the pads of his feet sticking slightly to the floor as he makes his exit.

"Hozzat?" Roy's voice is startled but drowsy as the vehicle outside whines in its braking. "What?"

"The WFA is here."

"Oh." He said up, putting on his glasses and looking at his stop watch. "Jesus, it's—"

"I know." Typical, that there was as much organization amid all this change was the modern mystery—that so much could happen and so much could stay the same. How much it could both delight and confuse the eyes: The holy men of India walk naked beside the roaring Jeep Wrangler in the teeming streets of Calcutta.

"Oh." Someone else sat up and blinked blearily. "Do you need—"

"No." Wufei coated his bare torso and legs with another layer of insect repellent before putting on his shirt, then thought better of it since it was useless. He waved to the others. "I have it."

"Oh." Roy laid back down. "Okehh…g'night…" And then his body stilled.

Trying to keep the spider in view—good, it's not a bad one, okay it can live—the Chinese man considers the car outside as he walks. Perhaps something would come out of this. Perhaps not. Perhaps it only delays the inevitable and he's wasting his time here. Perhaps not.

One thing is for certain. Wufei feels none of the urgency he had felt in China, the driving impatience that obviated sleep and food, proving what Dr. O had suspected: the he was capable of hard, compassionate work. He had carved himself a rare niche in a sporadic profession that was 90 percent unprepared youths ripping and roaring and ready to change the world.

Well, Wufei is not a youth anymore—he hasn't been for some time—and already familiar with the depressive existence that awaits him; most of all, Wufei wasn't suffering under any delusion that his role here was influencing the planet, or even the country.

Within a stone throw of air-conditioned office buildings linger pockets of jungle where men know nothing of Shiva, Jesus, or of iron, copper, gold, or bronze. They hunt with wooden spears and poison in the arrow tips from reptiles, only now and then stupefied by the sigh of mechanical bulldozers mowing down the land which was their world.

'They hold out on each other,' he thinks as he walks outside. 'The West has its power, but the East has its oil.'

Quatre.

/'You're a solitary dragon, Wufei, you know that? A solitary…dragon…/

They had all scattered into the four winds, possibly mere hours after the Gundams were destroyed—which was for the best. Hanging around would have only rooted them too deeply in the past in a world ready to move forward and forget; they, rotting their identities more than before, yes, it was for the best.

Dr. O thrived on pushing him forward. /'As quickly as possible, you must establish credibility. The real work begins when I stop watching you as a hawk. Remember, you lived in a small, jealous kingdom with few paltry treasures. The rest of the world is no different. You must rise above the squabbling and the envy. You must always remember that the work continues after the battle is over. And you alone must continue it.'/

And he thinks he has. He's done what he had said he would. He had done it for May Ling, for himself, for Treize, for the earth and colonies, for the challenge itself at first, and finally, for the idea itself.

It's the next day and Wufei finds his current life a selfish therapy, to use two hundred and fifty children daily being brought in complaining of ear aches, belly hurts, cuts, colds, and fevers…just so he won't have to think about May Ling.

Schools here are plagued by insects, leaky roofs and defective equipment, and a lack of method to identify needed repairs. Wufei administers Cetaphil, a moisturizing lotion, to a skin-cracked arm suffering what suspiciously looks like…well, it's treatable only with money that this place doesn't have right now. He debates, a moment, maybe two, before taking the hand of the tiny girl he's treating.

She's not yet twelve. She has wide, dark eyes and skin and hair like they all do, wearing clothes where if the cloth slips he could count her ribs. Her hands are tiny, and so are her fingernails, but they will dry and crack soon. In the healthy hand he places the tiny, 29mL plastic bottle—the kind that's barely larger than your palm—and tells her in his clumsy version of her language what to do with it. Her mouth is slightly open, her eyes unblinking, and she gives a slight dip of her chin when he's done that makes her short, beaded braids clink.

'It's pointless,' the old him sneers. The part that was deluded by false ideals, the side who almost killed his comrades. 'Your actions away from your integrity code are foolish! This is pointless, this is dishonoring…'

Foolish. Pointless. Dishonoring. All of it is true, even by his present standards.

But when it's all said and done, he watches the little girl—bony and graceless—run up to her father who glares at him suspiciously. She hops on his back and they leave. Back to the sodden fields the tribe farms but from which nothing ever grows. Back to the mosquito-ridden huts, the waters by them contaminated with dirty bodies and human waste; the flat land with not enough vaccines to go around, not nearly enough if she got worse. They go back there, those HIV carriers. They go back there; they always go back.

Because it is home.

* * *

_The world is on fire..._

And I try to bring more--  
it's more than I can handle.  
But I bring it to the table,  
bring what I am able.

_The world is on fire...  
...it's closing on in...  
--_Sarah McLachlan, World on Fire


End file.
